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About Classic Modula-2

Modula-2 is a strongly typed, modular, imperative programming language derived from
Xerox' Mesa language. It was published in 1978 at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology
in Zurich (ETHZ) by Prof. Niklaus Wirth as a successor to his earlier language Pascal.
More information about the classic Modula-2 language and its history can be found at:

About Modula-2 Revision 2010

Modula-2 R10 is a modern revision of N.Wirth's Modula-2 language undertaken by
B.Kowarsch and R.Sutcliffe in 2009 and 2010. A pragma system was added in
in 2011 and 2012. The Design was refined and polished in 2013. Extensive work
was done on blueprints and templates for the standard library in 2014 and 2015.
The language report is under editorial review and will be published in a book in 2016.
A draft is available for download in the download section of this repository.

The primary design goals of the revision were type safety, utmost readability
and consistency, and suitability as a core language for domain specific
supersets. Targeted areas of application are systems implementation,
engineering and mathematics. Some inspiration was taken from Ada and Oberon.

A particular strength of the design is a set of facilities to make library
defined abstract data types practically indistinguishable from built-in types
and thereby eliminate one of the major causes of feature growth.

Compiler Support

A reference compiler for Modula-2 R10 has been under development since 2010
but work had been suspended until the design is finalised. Initially, the compiler will
generate C99 source code, and eventually it will generate LLVM IR.

The developer of GNU Modula-2 has pledged to add support for Modula-2 R10 in
GM2. A to-do list for the conversion is now available in the download area. The GM2 compiler is a Modula-2 front-end for GCC.

Development Schedule

This project is a private and self-funded effort by the authors who are
doing this work in their own sparetime. Further, the authors believe that
quality design and proper specification are prerequisites for a quality
implementation and cannot be rushed. Work on a bootstrap compiler
is now under way but there is no fixed schedule for the completion of the compiler.